Almost exactly when you'd think it wouldn't be, it is a
slow time for the commercial billboard companies. To fill
their blank spaces, one of them has been running a mystery
campaign, featuring a nobody named Jean-Patrick.

The big, wide banners show Jean-Patrick drinking a cola
or shaving, with pithy texts such as "Jean-Patrick always
knew he'd be Jean-Patrick." or "Jean-Patrick doesn't
cheat."

The campaign was supposed to run for two weeks, but the
cat slipped out of the bag a few days early. It is the
brain-child of a billboard company calling attention to
itself - to point out the fact that
billboard messages do reach an audience.

The Mr. Nobody named Jean-Patrick has turned out to be a
nobody from New York, named James Christopher Candi, who
specializes in self-portraits of nobodies.

Regional
breweries on hand at the cow show find plenty of willing
'testers.'

Too bad he has just done himself out of a possible
lifetime job, by getting himself plastered all over Paris
for the past ten days.

According to Le Parisien, Mr. Candi has returned to New
York - but he hopes to return to Paris soon, where he is
fairly famous.

Web Life - Modest 'ThankYous'

Last week's absence of this column was not due to any of
you not sending in any interesting Paris URLs - although
nobody did. This means that the following contributions are
considered to be completely spontaneous, and therefore are
worth of big 'Thankyous.'

Michael McKinnon in Pomona is unrelated to Scott McBride
in Sausalito even if both places are in California. The
reason for linking their names here is that they've both
plugged the Paris click-maps found on France
Télécom's
PagesJaunes.

First you get a whole map of Paris, then you click on
part of it, and a close-up map appears. Then you click on
the street you want, and this eventually leads to a photo -
perhaps of a shop, or of an apartment building. Scott said
these images are available in 3D but I didn't see this,
possibly because I generally leave my 3D software turned
off. My building isn't on this Web site either.

Meanwhile, Paul Rupert, who recently became a
Café Metropole Club member by coming to a meeting
and signing the members' booklet, suggested the Paris
Chamber of Commerce web site - for its listings of
upcoming salons and trade fairs.

Paul Rupert is unrelated to Scott McBride even though
they both live in Sausalito. Christina Witsberger is also
unrelated to everybody above, which has nothing to do with
her living in Maryland.

Christina's plug is for the France
Tourism's famous people page. This gives a brief
overview of where to find some famous Parisians, like
Frédéric Chopin, who Christina thinks has
been sadly neglected in the museums and monuments
department.

Joel Stratte-McClure, who lives on the Riviera, sent an
email plugging a new book of photos titled 'Coastal Pleasures -
Perusing the French Coastline,' with a suggestion that
I review it. He also included the Web URL, so you can get
an idea of its contents without any interference from
me.

Your Paris Web URLs

If you have any favorite Paris Web sites you think other
readers should know about, please send them in. If they
haven't been featured before and they don't crash my
browser, you'll get a modest 'thankyou' here.

The Big
Catalogue

This is not La Redoute's or Trois-Suisses' combined
mailorder catalogues, but the catalogue of catalogues for
books in French. Called the 'Catalogue Collectif de
France,' it unites the catalogues of the
Bibliothèque Nationale, the university libraries,
and 55 specialized libraries around France. This site is
relatively new. Its ambition is also to provide documents
on demand, but this is still in the works.

Winter
Sports News

As of today, 'winter' is 67 days old. It may be a bit
more perky, colder and snowier than before. If you are
interested in the state of snow at French winter sports
stations, try hitting the Hiver, SkiFrance and Net4Ski Web sites.

The ex-ski champion Edgar Grospiron has a site, called
Ridearth. Especially
conceived for actual fans or practitioners of speedy
downhills, it features all sorts of current white snow
activities, including morsels of techno-ski music.

France's choo-choo people also have a winter sports Web
site. Clicking on Neige will bring up
whatever it is that the SNCF has to offer in this
line.

The 'Official' Weather - 110% 'Winter'

This weekend will see Paris getting a taste of real
winter and who knows how long it will last? For real
forecasts, give the Météo
France site a hit. Predictions are usually fairly
shortrange because Météo France doesn't have
any crystal balls to compare with the TV-weather news.